Editing David Hume (section)

=== Practical reason ===
''[[Practical reason]]'' relates to whether standards or principles exist that are also authoritative for all rational beings, dictating people's intentions and actions. Hume is mainly considered an anti-rationalist, denying the possibility for practical reason, although other philosophers such as [[Christine Korsgaard]], [[Jean Hampton]], and [[Elijah Millgram]] claim that Hume is not so much of an anti-rationalist as he is just a sceptic of practical reason.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mason |first=Michelle |author-link=Michelle Mason |date=September 2005 |title=Hume and Humeans on Practical Reason |url=http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v31n2/mason/mason-v31n2.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=[[Hume Studies]] |publisher= |volume=31 |issue=2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617090548/http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v31n2/mason/mason-v31n2.pdf |archive-date=17 June 2016 |access-date=27 May 2016}}</ref>

Hume denied the existence of practical reason as a principle because he claimed reason does not have any effect on morality, since morality is capable of producing effects in people that reason alone cannot create. As Hume explains in ''[[A Treatise of Human Nature]]'' (1740):<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|457}}

<blockquote>Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason."</blockquote>

Since practical reason is supposed to regulate our actions (in theory), Hume denied practical reason on the grounds that reason cannot directly oppose passions. As Hume puts it, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Reason is less significant than any passion because reason has no original influence, while "A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence."<ref name=":4" />{{Rp|415}}

Practical reason is also concerned with the value of actions rather than the truth of propositions,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url= http://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=practical-reason |title=Practical Reason |last=Wallace |first=Jay |year=2014 | encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=29 April 2016}}</ref> so Hume believed that reason's shortcoming of affecting morality proved that practical reason could not be authoritative for all rational beings, since morality was essential for dictating people's intentions and actions.